The present invention is directed to a catering equipment having a plurality of inserts or positions that can be loaded with food to be cooked and that are connected to at least one timer that can be set to a desired cooking time interval.
Traditional catering equipments are designed for cooking all foods to be cooked without time offset and, thus, all foods are completely cooked at the same time. The presence of one time switch is adequate for this purpose, and this time switch comprises a switch and timer. As soon as the catering equipment, such as an oven, has been turned on and has been loaded with food to be cooked at the desired cooking temperature and desired cooking time has been set, the time switch, after the expiration of the cooking time that has been set by the operator, will visually or audibly inform the operator that the completely-cooked foods are to be removed from the catering equipment, such as the oven.
In large-scale catering establishments, whether it is a restaurant or a canteen, there is more and more frequently the need to offer foods that are completely cooked and satisfy high quality standards in adaptation to the individual requests of the patrons at different points in time.
When, however, the inserts of a traditional catering equipment are loaded with food to be cooked differently for different durations of time, then, given the presence of only one time switch, an operator must remember the different cooking times, must write them down or, by repeatedly checking the degree of doneness of the foods, must determine when what food is to be removed from what position in its completely cooked condition. This not only makes high demands on the operating personnel but also is time-consuming and, thus, costly. Moreover, a loss of quality due to excessively long or excessively short cooking can easily occur as a consequence of inattentiveness or overload on the part of the operator.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,948, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference thereto and which corresponds to European 0 313 768 B1, discloses a parameter control system that comprises a programmed means for the individual setting and control of one or more cooking time intervals at a specific temperature and that can be connected to different cooking apparatus. This parameter control system thus fundamentally enables an "ala carte operation" of a catering equipment wherein different foods are inserted into the catering equipment at different times, depending on the demand. In that there is a possibility of individual setting and controlling of the cooking time intervals of each and every insertion, the integration of this parameter control system into the catering equipment at least makes it possible to overcome some of the disadvantages of the traditional catering equipment that uses a time switch.
Given employment of the parameter control system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,948 in a catering equipment, however, after setting the parameters and loading the positions with the food to be cooked, an operator must press a button allocated to the corresponding position for activating the corresponding timer. It is precisely in large-scale catering establishments, where things are usually hectic and it is not only trained personnel who are employed, however, that it cannot be precluded that the operators of the catering equipment do not press the corresponding button immediately after insertion of the food to be cooked, as a result whereof a substantial reduction in the quality of food can occur.